What are "powerful adjectives"?

[Hathor]

I know that adjectives are describing words, but what exactly are "powerful adjectives"?
I am sure we never had them when I was at school.

This is so true. I was at Parent-Teacher sessions yesterday looking at my boys' work. DS2, who's 7 and in Y3, has been doing scene setting and descriptive writing. I thought it was rather good, full of stuff like "The sky seemed like death to me" and "The blue light shone out brave and true like a hero". And his teacher's put on the bottom: "Remember those adjectives!"

Seriously, when I was about 14 I remember an English teacher writing on a piece of work, "Well done, but be a trifle less enthusiastic. Does every noun have to have an adjective?" I've never forgotten that.

Meanwhile, DS1 in Y6 has to check his work to add extra brackets, semi-colons and parenthetic commas so that he can get more marks in his SATS. I told the teacher it was writing by numbers.

Mammoth, blood-red, carmine-hewed, expensively-manufactured, Mont Blanc, Litchick! Editors seem to dislike adverbs even more, don't they? She says, inquiringly.

Those are great sentences for a seven-year old, singersgirl! I wouldn't want to take or add anything to them. He must be a bit of a reader, no?

Can I just ask those of you know? By a powerful adjective, do you mean a more accurate one? Or should I say one which is more closely descriptive? That's what I see in the examples given.

I think teachers are (rightly) encouraging children to go for more interesting (and often accurate) adjectives than, say: nice, good, big, little, old, etc.

A gigantic tree rather than a big tree
A wrinkled man instead of an old man

I'm not feeling inspired this morning!

I think teachers are (rightly) encouraging children to go for more interesting (and often accurate) adjectives than, say: nice, good, big, little, old, etc.

A gigantic tree rather than a big tree
A wrinkled man instead of an old man

I'm not feeling inspired this morning!

Ah adverbs...yes indeed they are the devil no? And to be fair a stronger verb is ofetn so much better.
And don't get me started on muttered, murmered, whispered etc after speech. Grrrrr.

I agree, she croaked.

Yes, he does read quite a lot, and I was surprised he had written anything like that. Not enough adjectives though.

Litchick, do you mean you don't like the whole 'muttered', 'murmured', 'don't say said' business?

I'm astonished at how commoditised children's writing seems to have to be. Surely an energetic, coherent piece with its own rhythm and style is better than lots of laboured stuck-on adjectives and punctuation?

Her pallid fingers, icy after so long in the frozen attic, pecked hungrily at the keyboard like famished chickens; wearily, she realised that she had finally squeezed the parenthetic commas and the semi-colon into her work, though she was perilously close to forgetting the tricky brackets (oh, how tricky they were!) Her tedious post was almost done, but wait...

Ha, just done this on a course! You have to put two adjectives infront of the noun - like organic wholemeal loaf. Most adverts contain good examples! It gets you more points in your SAT's as does starting a sentence with an adverb. And that's what we're all aiming for, isn't it

Two adjectives!!! My editor would have to lie down.

Don't be too dismissive of punctuation! It has its place!

The inspector said the teacher was an idiot.

'The inspector', said the teacher, 'was an idiot.'

Punctuation is all very well in its proper place, of course!

powerful just means having more impact.

Hi, Im Maisie and im pregnant with twins can i have some advice?